The simulator validation study confirms the simulator’s ability to correctly simulate the real road environment, and strengthens the reliability as a source for statistical Inference. The goal of this work was to investigate whether the Dome simulator successfully simulates typical pedestrian environment in a manner that will elicit people to act in the same manner as they would in the real world crossing situations. Data analysis shows that the simulator delivers more reliable results concerning speeds rather than distances. Questionnaires analyses show that the simulator’s faith to reality regarding the display, sound effect and perspective is medium.

Highlights

we explored child-pedestrians’ HP skills employing hazard detection task in virtual settings (our Dome lab). We used the same approach that we have used previously in the driving HP domain to study novice drivers. As pedestrians’ age increased their awareness toward potential hazards increased. 7–9-year-olds reported less instances of FOV obscured by parked vehicles. 7–9-year-olds lingered more in identifying instances of FOV obscured by parked vehicles.

Abstract

Background. Child-pedestrians are more prone to fail in identifying hazardous situations. Aiming to better understand the development of hazard-perception abilities in dynamic road situations we examined participants’ hazard detection abilities in a virtual environment.

Method. Experienced-adult participants and child-pedestrians observed typical road crossing related scenarios from a pedestrian’s point of view and engaged in a hazard detection task.

Results. Consistent with our hypotheses, less instances of obscured field of view by parked vehicles were reported as hazardous by 7–9-year-olds, who were also prone to linger more in identifying situations depicting field of view partially obscured by parked vehicles compared to all other age groups. Reports of obscured field of view by road curvature as hazardous increased with age.

Conclusions. Understanding child-pedestrians’ shortcomings in evaluating traffic situations contribute to the effort of producing intervention techniques which may increase their attentiveness toward potential hazards and lead toward reduction in their over-involvement in crashes.

This is a “heavy” article co authored by Avinoam Borowsky – it summorizes in one study all the methodologies that we have used in the past to assess hazard perception and risk, and its power is in this overall view.

it portrays the use of three methodologies of assesment for hazard awareness and risk perception in a single study:

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of driving experience on hazard awareness and risk perception skills. These topics have previously been investigated separately, yet a novel approach is suggested where hazard awareness and risk perception are examined concurrently. Young, newly qualified drivers, experienced drivers, and a group of commercial drivers, namely, taxi drivers performed three consecutive tasks: (1) observed 10 short movies of real-world driving situations and were asked to press a button each time they identified a hazardous situation; (2) observed one of three possible sub-sets of 8 movies (out of the 10 they have seen earlier) for the second time, and were asked to categorize them into an arbitrary number of clusters according to the similarity in their hazardous situation; and (3) observed the same sub-set for a third time and following each movie were asked to rate its level of hazardousness. The first task is considered a real-time identification task while the other two are performed using hindsight. During it participants’ eye movements were recorded. Results showed that taxi drivers were more sensitive to hidden hazards than the other driver groups and that young-novices were the least sensitive. Young-novice drivers also relied heavily on materialized hazards in their categorization structure. In addition, it emerged that risk perception was derived from two major components: the likelihood of a crash and the severity of its outcome. Yet, the outcome was rarely considered under time pressure (i.e., in real-time hazard identification tasks). Using hindsight, when drivers were provided with the opportunity to rate the movies’ hazardousness more freely (rating task) they considered both components. Otherwise, in the categorization task, they usually chose the severity of the crash outcome as their dominant criterion. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Here is just one example of the manipulation used in the classification task, where we used common still images and one varied exemplar, to asses whether this manipulation changed participants classification.

Representative photos of the seven common movies for Sets 1-3, as they appear in Borowsky and Oron-Gilad (2013)

Representative photos of the varied exemplar for Sets 1-3, as they appear in Borowsky and Oron-Gilad (2013)

Abstract

Child-pedestrians, especially those in the age range of 5–9-years, are amongst the most vulnerable road users. These youngsters are highly represented in fatal and severe injury road crashes, despite relatively low levels of exposure to traffic. The present research investigated child and adult pedestrians’ perception of hazards utilizing a crossing decision task. Twenty-one adults (20–27 years-old) and twenty-five young-children (eight 7–9-year olds,five 9–10-year-olds and twelve 10–13-year-olds) were requested to observe traffic scene scenarios presented in a mixed reality dynamic environment simulating a typical Israeli city from a pedestrian’s perspective, and to press a response button whenever they assumed it was safe to cross. Results have shown that as pedestrians’ age and experience level increased their attentiveness towards potential hazards increases and their ability to anticipate upcoming events while engaging in a road-crossing task was enhanced. Furthermore, both the 9–10-year-olds and the 10–13-year-olds presented a less decisive performance compared to both the experienced-adult pedestrians and the 7–9-year-olds. Understanding child-pedestrians’ shortcomings in evaluating traffic situations may contribute to the effort of producing intervention techniques which may increase their attentiveness towards potential hazards and pave the way for reducing their over-involvement in road crashes. Implications for training novice road users will be discussed.

Our 3-D environment was specifically designed (B-design) for walking road users, as it provides high level of detail necessary for a walking person (i.e., not the entire urban model is built, the emphasis is on the façade). Using a 180 degrees large dome allows the feeling of immersion.

Eye tracking

A sample of a crossing scenario eye tracking pattern of a young pedestrian can be seen in the following video. Note the amount of time that the child spend viewing the cross walk itself rather than the road. My Ph.D student Hagai Tapiro is responsible for the production of this video.